How does cpanel-based site hosting function?
For your info, it's useful to know that most of the cPanel webspace hosting offerings on the current website hosting marketplace are provided by a very insignificant business segment (when it comes to yearly money flow) called reseller hosting. Reseller web hosting is a kind of a small-size marketing segment, which generates an enormous amount of different web hosting brands, yet offering one and the same thing: mostly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Because of the fact that at least ninety eight percent of the web space hosting offerings on the whole webspace hosting market furnish the very same thing: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel site hosting prices are identical. Very identical. Giving those who need a top web hosting service practically no other website hosting platform/web page hosting CP choice. So, there is just a single fact: out of more than 200k website hosting trademarks in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than two percent, note that one...
Two hundred thousand "web hosting suppliers", all cPanel-based, yet diversely dubbed
The webspace hosting "diversity" and the web site hosting "offers" Google presents to us boil down to merely one thing: cPanel. Under hundreds of thousands of different web hosting trademarked names. Imagine you are only a regular person who's not very familiar with (as most of us) with the website creation processes and the web site hosting platforms, which in fact power the various domains and web pages . Are you ready to make your hosting pick? Is there any web page hosting alternative you can opt for? Sure there is, nowadays there are more than 200k web site hosting distributors out there. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these 200k+ different web hosting brands all over the world will give you the very same cPanel web site hosting Control Panel and platform, named in a different way, with the very same price tags! WOW! That's how vast the diversity on today's site hosting market is... Period.
The hosting LOTTERY we are all part of
Simple math shows that to select a non-cPanel based web hosting supplier is a great stroke of luck. There is a less than one in fifty chance that something like that will take place! Less than one in 50...
The positive and negative aspects of the cPanel-based web space hosting solution
Let's not be unfair with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and presumably satisfied all web hosting industry prerequisites. In brief, cPanel can do the job for you if you have just a single domain name to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Negative Side Number One: An imbecilic domain name folder structure
If you have two or more domains, however, be very careful not to erase completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each subsequent hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domains are quite simple to remove on the web hosting server, since they all are created into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the quite famous public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder located inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to remove the files of the add-on domain names, please. Observe for yourself how fabulous cPanel's domain folder setup is:
public_html (here my-default-domain.com is located)public_html/my-family (a folder part of my-default-domain.com)
public_html/my-second-domain.com (an add-on domain name)
public_html/my-second-wife (a folder part of my-default-domain.com)
public_html/my-second-wife.net (an add-on domain)
public_html/my-third-domain.com (an add-on domain name)
public_html/my-third-wife (a folder part of my-default-domain.com)
public_html/my-third-wife.net (an add-on domain)
public_html/rebeka (a folder part of my-default-domain.com)
public_html/rebeka.my-third-wife.net (a sub-domain of an add-on domain)
Are you growing perplexed? We surely are!
Shortcoming No.2: The very same electronic mail folder system
The email folder configuration on the web server is strictly the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the very same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin chums strongly increase their belief in God when dealing with the mail folders on the email server, hoping not to botch things up too irretrievably.
Downside Number Three: An absolute deficiency of domain manipulation tools
Do we have to bring up the complete lack of a modern domain name manipulation GUI - a location where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or manage domain names, alter domain names' Whois information, shield the Whois information, alter/create nameservers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not have such a "contemporary" interface at all. That's a mammoth downside. An unjustifiable one, we wish to point out...
Predicament No.4: Many login places (min 2, maximum 3)
What about the need for another login to access the invoice transaction, domain and technical support management interface? That's beside the cPanel account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel-based website hosting supplier. At times, based on the billing transaction tool (principally conceived for cPanel only) the cPanel web hosting supplier is making use of, the keen clients can wind up with 2 additional login locations (1: the invoicing/domain name management section; 2: the ticket support menu), winding up with an aggregate of 3 login places (counting cPanel).
Negative Point Number Five: More than a hundred and twenty web hosting Control Panel sections to get acquainted with... briskly
cPanel presents for your consideration more than 120 menus inside the website hosting CP. It's a great idea to become acquainted with each one of them. And you'd better grasp them rapidly... That's way too insolent on cPanel's side.
With all due veneration, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based web hosting vendors:
As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mark that one as well...